> So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism.

This doesn't make a lot of sense for two reasons.

The first is that real estate is more the exception than the rule in being subject to property tax to begin with. If foreign investors want a store of value that minimizes "property tax" then they could just buy stocks or bonds etc. Which is why "foreign investors" are a red herring that pundits keep bringing up because it's clickbait or because they want a scapegoat to divert attention from the real problem (which is zoning).

The second is that if you have a place where taxes are lower than other places, that's the place people should be lobbying to build things. Who wants their lower taxes to be on a $1M single family home when they could be on a $100M skyscraper? The main reason this isn't happening is that the effective property tax rate in California is ~0.7% compared to the national average of ~0.9%, which isn't enough different to make a dramatic difference.

The real problem with prop 13 is that it resets on sale transactions or if you build anything, which does provide a major deterrent to construction because then existing property owners neither want to sell to a developer and use the money to buy something else nor build anything on their property themselves since either one would result in a huge tax hike.

This is an issue in other cities that don’t have prop 13 fwiw, the United States just does not do redevelopment barring a few poor inner neighborhoods getting gentrified by foreclosures in like Houston or Dallas. That’s the natural consequence of individual ownership of houses.

Yeah, I had dinner with a REIT exec a few years ago, they explicitly called out how they loved how Prop 13 kept the CA property market inflated and NIMBYism strong. Absolutely worth trying to tear it down if you care about housing affordability.

This.

The table in the article seems to contradict its own headline.

The headline says there are not 40k vacant homes, but the table breaks down the reasons for vacancy of just a bit over 40k homes. So it sounds to me like there are in fact 40k vacant homes.

And it goes on to say:

> Yes, 40,458 units of housing in San Francisco were classified as “vacant” in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) for 2019.

However it also says:

> an occupied unit is actually classified as “vacant” for the purposes of the ACS if the person living in the unit is planning to move within two months of being surveyed

But this doesn't appear to match any of the categories that sum to 40458, so I am not sure if this is even applicable.

> When a good's supply is constrained, it becomes a store of value. See: gold.

That doesn't make sense as stated, because every physical commodity is supply-constrained to some extent, even and especially the ones that are extremely bad stores of value. Picking on Fermium (it has a nice atomic number) - Fermium is supply constrained and it makes a horrible store of value because it rapidly morphs into something else.

Gold is a well-liked store of value because it is absurdly stable (about as close as we can practically get to indestructible) and roughly the easiest to physically store out of all the durable candidates.

When property taxes are higher housing is built more densely.

This is because the store of value quickly becomes a millstone around the owner's neck if it isnt being used efficiently. That's a feature if you want a healthy city and a bug if you're one of the ultra wealthy.

The UK is a bit like San Francisco in this respect. There are no property taxes, just something called a council tax (which is basically a poll tax) and "stamp duty" which is levied only on property transactions.

The latter is particularly toxic because it actively encourages property hoarding.

This is why London is an alpha world+ city which can't build up to save its life.